What mothers do for their kids

That is truly horrible! A baby factory.

Unbelievable.

India has got a long way to go.

I'm going to watch this to-night thanks for reminding me I would have forgotten about it.

This has just been discussed on The Wright Stuff and it was pointed out that the money paid to the women is about ten years wages - the equivalent of a surrogate in Britain being paid £250,000. Many of the women are in desperate poverty and they are housed in dormitories and given full medical care. The Western women who use a surrogate have often tried to adopt in Britain and found it impossible.

Thanks for the post bags. Poverty drives ordinary people to do things they would never choose, if other opportunities were available to them. I don't find this way of earning money for your family as distressing as the number of women and children forced into being sex workers. Especially those whose families/selves believed they were being taken to Mumbai (or Europe anywhere in the world) to be domestic helps to wealthy families, yet find themselves trapped and terrified. No choices for them

Oops - post went before previewed and finished. I understand the arguments about it secures the Indian mothers' families futures and there are much worse ways than this could happen but I'm posing the question ethically and philosophically - and also how would we feel if this a story about organs being bought ?

Missing post asked if it is acceptable that relatively well off women can hire another woman's uterus?

I would view the sale of organs quite differently, because that would be much more dangerous for the health of the donor. The surrogate mothers are given good ante-natal care because the clinic wants a healthy baby. I don't know about after-care.
As far as I can see, these are transactions entered into voluntarily on both sides. There is usually no genetic input from the surrogate, as far as I know, so she really is simply acting as an incubator for the other woman's baby.

Yes GN the issue about the danger to health of organ donors - but pregnancy is not risk free - I wonder what happens if the mother is ill or dies as a result of the pregnancy or the baby is disabled or dies. Perhaps the programme will explore that. What I am struggling with is finding an an ethical/philosophical framework that says its ok or not ok to do this. Where do we draw the line at was it not for sale? And why?

I think our attitude to various philosophical questions alters as science and research opens up new possibilities.

The problem is that the new possibilities open up before the thinking has been done and then all the arguments become post hoc rationalisations if we're not careful

I have always been bothered by the emotional/psychological issues involved in surrogacy, and sperm donation on babies born as a result. Also by men who casually donate sperm for cash and don't want the children born as a result of have any rights to have contact with them. Men who walk away when a woman they have been involved with tells them a baby is unexpectedly on it's way. Women who choose to have babies yet give them no opportunity to have a relationship with their biological father. I accept the issues for the women who become surrogates in the way described on the link are doing so with the aim of providing a better life for their existing children - but I share the views of Bluebell and Greatnan about the way in which our attitude to philosophical and ethical questions often follows the science, rather than informing it.

There are so many ethical questions around medical procedures - such as those involving 'saviour siblings' where a baby is conceived in order to find a match for a sibling - covered in 'Emmerdale'. We have heard of the problems when a surrogate mother refuses to give up a baby (well handled in Coronation Street.)
The soaps have tackled many of the issues involved in new procedures, in a very serious manner and they reach millions of viewers who would not access other media where they are discussed.
I am not sure why the Catholic Church is so opposed to stem cell research, as I believe the cells are obtained from umbilical cords, which would just be thrown away.

The health risks from IVF, when preparing the uterus to accept a fertilised egg, are rarely disclosed. Both my daugters underwent this process and suffered awful side-effects. One daughter's liver was badly affected and she had to receive treatment to control the massive dose of hormones that threatened to overwhelm her liver, causing her to be very ill throughout her short pregnancy of 30 weeks. Her premature babies were delivered at the earliest time so she and her babies could start to recover, which was thankfully quick. They are all fine.

Additionally, the ethical issue of donating harvested eggs is a burden many couples going through IVF don't expect to face. If they don't have success immediately, one way to avoid expensive payment for further rounds of treatment is to donate eggs. My daughters chose not to because they could not bear the thought of their potential child being anywhere eise but with them, but if they had not been successful first time, they might have had to change their minds. Both said they would be wondering about those potential children and whether they would want to find them.

I'll watch this programme. I want to know how these women cope, even though they are only providing the means of incubating fertilised eggs. Many western women who have been surrogate mothers have kept the babies, even when the eggs were donated by a third party. It must be very diffcult for some women to bear another woman's child and hand them over. Couldn't do it myself.

I think I really cannot judge this woman or the situation. We have never known what it is like to be so desperately poor. We can't imagine it. Good for her if she really gets this money and can hang onto it or is there a husband or a father waiting in the wings to get his hands on it? We shall never know but the baby will be loved and cared for and she will know this. Being so poor it will console her and to be truthfull her day is probably so full of thankless tasks and drudgery that she won't have the energy to grieve.

I'm pretty certain that we discussed this topic a while ago when a surrogate mother in India had died because the priority medical treatment was for the child she was carrying not for her. I doubt if anything has changed in the interim.

That was such an interesting programme. These Indian women surprised me, in the way they looked after the babies following birth, being nannies and continuing to breast feed in some cases. There was clearly a bond with the babies in most cases, and I wonder how they coped with the separation when the parents came along to take the babies home.

I do think there was some exploitation, and maybe in years to come there will be a backlash as some of the children ask about the 'mother' who gave birth to them.

I suppose the surrogates saw it as the least of many evils.

In an ideal world these women wouldn't be driven to such measures but as things are I think it's a reasonable thing for them to undertake.

They're paid a life-changing fee and that must be very tempting. Other than winning a lottery how else could they lift their family out of poverty?

Yes, their limited choices informed those decisions to do what they could in their dire circumstances. I sympathise with the childless couples, too. The lengths some people will go to, to have their own child! My girls both faced the possibility of not being able to have a child, but saw their options being around adoption if IVF had failed.